I personally liked the concepts in the power and purity readings from Mark Mitchell. They really made me think hard about Nietzsche’s theories and concepts. I thought the opening that he chose was perplexing since I do remember when the California congresswomen publicly told people to harass members in trumps cabinet on the news. Its one thing to hold up signs and do a peaceful protest while someone is giving a speech but harassing people in the public domain while their not in work (such as a restaurant) is going way too far.
All of these examples that Mark Mitchell provides only strengthen the ideas of Nietzsche. Politics is definitely mixing with everyday life.
When Mitchell says “we have lost faith in the very ideals that made us who we were.” that got me thinking about the constitution since even though its outdated those are our ideals and people keep saying we need to change them. We may have talked about this concept in the Wood reading from last week in class. Mitchell goes on to say that America is a Puritan at its heart.
I thought that the Nietzschean will to power concept was interesting and how he links it to Puritanism and Christianity. The ideas of truth, or how we once thought about it reminded me of some of the concepts that Gad Saad talked about in his book.
When Nietzsche declared that God was dead in the sense that the idea of God was no longer plausible, I did not quite know what to think, but it started to make more sense the further i got into the reading. If I’m understanding this correctly, Nietzsche believes that life is the will to power and not the will to truth (and the will to morality plays a part in that).
A question that I had was since Nietzsche saw Christianity and Christian morality as the mortal enemies of life itself, Why was that the case? Was it because the ideals of Christianity are confining and therefore not allowing our liberal democratic society to produce the one powerful individual who will ascend above everyone else? (then again liberal institutions are confining for those reasons (page 47)
Other connections that I made from the other readings were on victimhood and the 1619 project, one talked about in Gad’s book and the other in Peter Wood’s book. I also thought the concept of identity politics since Mitchel describes it as a politics that unites to divide.
(page 54)
One reply on “Blog post #11 week of 11/2”
While I do not know the cause, I think that this is a very interesting question that you pose. Nietzsche’s view is that freedom is the ability to have will and responsibility for oneself, and from my personal view of Christianity is to not think of one’s self and that freedom is to live in obedience to God. So Nietzsche might have believed that the regulations and rules of Christianity are too confining. But something in your question that I am having a bit of trouble understanding is the part of the ascension of the one powerful individual. I am not sure if the ideals of freedom of Christians have caused Nietzsche to view them as enemies of life itself. I question if it has to do with other facets of both ideologies.